Cr Robert Bell said Uralla Shire Council paid a private company's staff member a half day of work for building inspections, and half a day for office work.

He said the inspections day was Wednesday, so all builders needed to have everything ready for that day or risk waiting another week.

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"If you dug out the footing this week in Uralla, then the rain came, you'd have to wait another week," Cr Bell said.

He and Uralla Business Chamber president Teresa French had heard from many people frustrated with the current system and both said the public needed to approach the council with their concerns.

"We want to hear from people who are having issues, but also, they should take them to council as well, because we can't give council hearsay. We need people to put into council 'this is the issue we're having' so we can get a resolution that way," Ms French said.

"If people simply complain about things, they'll never get good outcomes."

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A Uralla Shire Council (USC) spokeswoman said they had been without a full-time building certifier since October 2017 "despite numerous attempts to engage one".

"Like many smaller rural councils, these services are provided in Uralla shire by contract certifiers on a part-time basis, subject to availability," she said.

"Council regularly receives complaints about availability of our contract certifiers, however residents who require inspections on days where council's certifiers are not available can engage a number of local private contractors to provide these services."

An option being considered by the business chamber is a collaboration with Armidale Regional Council to share resources to alleviate the issues.

Cr Bell said this would be a "possibility", but it hadn't been reviewed by council.

"We've had discussions with one of the building inspectors from Armidale but again haven't seen any progress on that," he said.

"It's a very important item for the executives to review.

"I'm really keen to see some progress made. The development going on in Tamworth is huge, and so I'm looking forward to the same thing happening in Uralla."

Armidale mayor Ian Tiley told the Express the council would be "amenable" if approached by Uralla council.

"I met with [Uralla mayor] Michael Pearce last week and indicated that we would like to cooperate with them wherever we can," Cr Tiley said.

"We both expressed a desire as neighbouring councils to work cooperatively wherever we could, and the proposal ... I think is something we could consider."

The Uralla council spokeswoman said that on occasion it does share resources with neighbouring councils, but building certifiers are in short supply across the state so it's rarely an option.

She said the council was negotiating with its contract certifiers to increase the number of days to two each week.

"In a normal year, council would process somewhere in the region of 80 construction certificates and 40 complying development certificates, though this can vary greatly," she said.

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